Rex and the City, Part XXV: To Stay Home or Not to Stay Home

In which Ed and I both take full time jobs and Wallace has to endure doggie day care....

MUST LOVE DOGS is a reader-supported publication. If you have the means and you value this work, I’d be so grateful if you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber. This will help me sustain these offerings and continue writing.

Hello Dear Readers!

Today, as usual, I am posting yet another installment—the 25th!—of my “Rex in the City'' series from the late, great BARK magazine. For those of you who are new subscribers: BARK was primarily a print magazine, so a lot of these pieces never appeared online. That’s why I am sharing this series. You can also find most of these pieces—in revised form—within chapters of my memoir REX AND THE CITY, published by Random House in 2006 with a 10th anniversary paperback edition published by Diversion Books in 2016. 

I really loved rereading this piece, which is about taking Wallace to a fancy doggy daycare in New York City. It was really a great place. Until it wasn't. And I still remember our friend Jose—one of the original staffpeople— with so much gratitude and affection.  It was beautiful to witness our dog making such good friends with—and learning to trust--another male.

A few things for new subscribers to note: if you are questioning my use of the names “Ed” vs “Ted” and/or “Wallace” vs “Rex,” please note that our dog was actually named Wallace, not Rex. To read more about why we changed the dog’s and peoples’ name for the Bark series, read here.

I hope you enjoy reading the piece. I love Substack and the way it offers an opportunity to re-connect with readers who were long-time fans of Bark and of Rex and the City for so many years. We all share the same love of dogs. And sharing what we love is an uplifting practice.

And please comment and share! I still need to convince the Great Algorithm that I am not the Lee Harrington author who writes about bondage. Totally different person, my friends. And yet Google keeps merging me and him into one “entity” who writes about S&M and dogs. I am just a dog-lady, my friends. Nothing more :) The more you share, the more you’ll support my effort to reclaim my own online identity. This is the world we live in.

Sending you and your dogs so much love!

And now, on to Rex #25 (that’s XXV for you Latin speakers)

Love,

Lee

This 25th installment of the REX AND THE CITY/REX IN THE CITY series—“TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY” —originally appeared in Bark magazine, Volume 45, Nov/Dec 2007, Copyright © Lee Harrington (writing as Lee Forgotson and E. M. Harrington). Illustrations copyright Bark and the credited artists. NOTE: I have no affiliation or agreement with any advertisers shown—those are all old ads from the original print edition.

I actually had dreams about stabbing my manuscript, the way Harry Potter stabs Tom Riddle's diary in Chamber of Secrets.

Rex in the City PART XXV: To stay at home or to not stay at home, that is the question

BY LEE HARRINGTON, November, 2007

EVERY WRITER REACHES A TIME IN HER LIFE WHEN she has to acknowledge--albeit grudgingly--that maybe her father was right. That maybe she needs to "get a grip on reality" and "get a real job? But I promised my father I wouldn't write about him in this column anymore so let us now turn the camera on Ted.

It was 1998 and Ted and I had been married six months.He had taken the real-job plunge three months earlier, and found himself working as a big-time producer at a big-time television network. The agreement was that I, who had been working full-time on a novel, would finish off that novel, send it to some agents and then take the real-job plunge myself. To date we had been living comfortably and happily, but our savings accounts were dwindling, and we had hopes of buying an apartment. Plus, we had a dog to support.

Now, anyone who has written a novel, or has attempted to write one, knows that by the time you finish it you are pretty much wrecked. You hate your book, you question why you ever wanted to be a writer in the first place and you vow never to pick up that pen again. I actually had dreams about stabbing my manuscript, the way Harry Potter stabs Tom Riddle's diary in Chamber of Secrets.

So, needless to say, I was thrilled to accept a full-time position as an assistant editor at a prestigious literary magazine newly founded by a famous film director. I adored the women I worked with—all of us smart, witty, driven, and in love with the written word— and the intimacy of our office--a sunny, funky loft near Union Square. And I loved wearing real clothes to work--namely, anything that wasn't covered in dog hair or drool. Granted, it wasn't a high-paying job, but I still considered it a privilege to spend my days buried in stories and working with writers of quality prose.

The only glitch was our dog.